


the blessing is in the seed (the advantage of withholding your honesty remix)

by zjofierose



Series: elegy in joy [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Hockey, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, M/M, POV Keith (Voltron), POV Second Person, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Pining, Remix, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, alternate universe - check please!, check
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 14:04:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19133536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: On your thirteenth birthday, you went to bed and slept, because you know it will not matter what shows up on your wrist at all.





	1. let us nourish beginnings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strangetowns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the advantage of withholding your honesty](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6505462) by [strangetowns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/pseuds/strangetowns). 



> Many, many thanks to @baronvonchop and @quazydellasue for beta-ing, and to @sapphirescribe for the Check, Please! beta!! Couldn't have done it without you all.
> 
> Written for the Sheith Remix Challenge, and based off a fic by @strangetowns that I loved _a lot_ , and highly recommend reading!!!
> 
> (In fact, I liked it so much, I remixed it _twice_ , so please check out the previous fic in this series!)
> 
> title and chapter titles from Elegy for Joy, by Muriel Rukeyser.

No one in the home knows your birthday except for the administrator, and that’s the way you prefer it. You’ve seen some kids throw little parties, waiting up till midnight on the night of their thirteenth birthday just to  _ ooh _ and  _ aah _ with their friends as their wrist blooms tendrils of destiny. It’s all fantasy - the soulmate who will suddenly appear to whisk them away, out of abandonment and poverty and into a life of love and legitimacy - it never actually happens.

You know better. You go to bed as usual at lights out, and you lie there in the dark listening to your roommate snore until the grey light of dawn creeps in around the edges of the industrial green curtains. You get up, pull on your clothes, and go to the bathroom, which is where you see for the first time the mark that will remain indelibly on your person for the rest of your life.

_ Krolia Kogane _ , it reads, in the same perfect script that scrawls across your birth certificate.

You want to laugh. You want to scream. You might need to cry, but all you can manage is a dry little hiccup at the revelation that Krolia Kogane, your mother, the woman who disappeared from your life before you were two years old, is also your soulmate.

You allow yourself a full minute to stare at the mark before you force yourself to pull your sleeve back into place.

You brush your teeth. You comb your hair. You wash your face. 

You move on.

——

Middle school is a burden and high school is worse; you drop out at sixteen, run away from the group home, and move into the high desert, taking a job driving the zamboni and working concessions at the local rink while you study for the GED. Your dad played hockey when you were a kid, and you know how to skate just fine. Sometimes you stay to watch the local pick-up team practice, and sometimes they need an extra player, and that’s how you learn you’re pretty good on the ice.

Not long after your eighteenth birthday the coach approaches you with the news that he submitted a video of you skating forward to Samwell, some hockey school in the northeast with a program that lets students work on-campus jobs in exchange for free tuition, and they’ve accepted you. You have the next nine months to save up enough to pay for housing, food, and a plane ticket east.

You start pulling double shifts.

—-

Samwell is like something out of a magazine, and you deal with your self-consciousness about your meager possessions and threadbare clothes by lifting your chin as high as it goes and making everyone else break eye contact first. The buildings are old and the landscaping is immaculate, and while it’s got a reputation as the queerest school around, all you can see are upper-middle-class students with their shiny hair and straight teeth and new backpacks carrying their new textbooks from their new cars to their new homes.

You’ve got a spot in the dorms, and you navigate your way through the milling crowd to your new home with no little trepidation. Your room is easy enough to find; apparently they toss all the freshman athletes in the same building, which, you figure, probably saves on furniture as you eyeball your rickety bed frame and the much-abused desk in the corner. It doesn’t matter; you’ve slept on worse. You toss your backpack into the closet and set the box you’ve been carrying on the bed. Your roommate has clearly already moved in, if the perfectly made bed and the lacrosse pennants on the wall are any indication. You roll your eyes - kid probably started in T-Ball when he was five and has bought every uniform since. 

You unpack your small collection of paperbacks onto the shelf above the bed, shove some notebooks into the desk, and drop the box into the bottom of the closet for laundry duty. Unpacking your backpack takes slightly longer, but not much: it’s an old aluminum frame backpack of your father’s that they let you keep through all the years in and out of foster care. You fold your clothes into the drawers of the built-in dresser, hang your coat in the closet. At the very bottom, wrapped in your sheets and blanket, are your prized possessions and the reason you’re here. You pull the bundle out and unroll it, careful to keep the guards in place as the fabric falls away to reveal the skates the team had bought you as a going-away present. You’ve worn them only once, on the day they were given to you, but they fit like a dream and are easily the most expensive thing you’ve ever owned. 

You settle them carefully in the bottom of the closet next to the cardboard box and the now-empty backpack, and make your bed before lying down on it. The sun streams through the window at the end of the room, and you stare at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of people coming and going in the hallway. 

_ Home _ , you tell yourself;  _ this is home _ .

—

You’re mostly not nervous about meeting the team, and it mostly pays off. Hunk is the biggest D-man you’ve ever seen in person, easily 6’3” and 250 pounds. He’s also the friendliest person you’ve ever met, hockey or otherwise, and hugs first, asks questions later. Matt is the other first line D-man, and while he looks small next to Hunk, you take a hit from him during practice that you’re going to be feeling tomorrow. Dude’s 90% muscle and 10% floppy hair, you decide, and feel grateful that he seems to share Hunk’s cheerful disposition. Lance is the left wing, and he hates you on sight for reasons that you don’t understand, but by the end of the practice the feeling is more than mutual, so that’s gonna be fun. 

The captain… the captain is Takashi Shirogane, and his is the only name you recognize, though you don’t admit it when he introduces himself and shakes your hand. He’s as tall as Hunk and just as broad, though his build speaks of years of strength training versus Hunk’s genetic gifts. His hair is black, save for a ridiculous puff of white at the front, his hands dwarf yours, his eyes are a warm grey, and his voice… He’s a prodigy, the son of a hockey legend, star of  juniors  in his own right, and you have no idea what he’s doing here captaining a college team, but you’re not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Takashi Shirogane has a gift, and you will be blessed to learn from him. 

—

It’s Matt who invites you over to the Haus the first time, you and the rest of the frogs, and somewhere between the funny smelling couch and the third beer you start to relax a little. 

“He’s something, isn’t he?”

You startle at the sound of the voice beside you, turning to see Pidge, the team manager, whom you’d met in passing before practice. She’s a tiny copy of Matt, his little sister and looks it, all levitating brown hair and sharp hazel eyes. 

“Who?” you ask, taking a pull from your beer. It’s pisswater, but this is college- it’s like a rite of passage, you think. 

“Shiro,” she answers, narrowing her eyes at you. “I don’t know you, new kid, but I’m here to tell you that just because everyone knows who Takashi Shirogane is, that doesn’t mean they know who  _ Shiro _ is.” Her eyes narrow even more. “ _ We _ do. And we protect that. You get me?”

You roll your eyes, refusing to either challenge or submit. You know how these games are played, and while you appreciate the effort on her part as a signal of how important Shiro must be to his friends, to the team, you’re not going to just roll over and show your belly to someone you met not twelve hours ago. 

“You giving the shovel talk to all the frogs?” you ask, holding her gaze until she starts to smile. 

“Yeah,” she answers, “it’s my job, and I take it seriously.” Her face goes from amused to serious again in the blink of an eye. “But it’s my job because we’ve had trouble before, and we don’t want to have it again.  _ Capiche _ ?”

You tip the mouth of your bottle to hers, clinking the glass lips together. “I’m just here to play hockey and get a degree,” you say, “no more, no less.”

“Good,” she smiles fully, and the resemblance to Matt is uncanny. “Glad we understand each other.”

You nod absently as she walks off, and let your gaze drift back to Shiro where he stands in a circle of friends and admirers. He’s laughing, head thrown back and muscles straining out from beneath a faded red Samwell Hockey t-shirt. You drink your beer and watch.

—

“Hey, Kogane,” the voice that shouts after you as you leave the ice two weeks later is familiar, but you have no clue what reason it could have for wanting to talk to you. 

“Yeah?” You pause, one skate on the ice, one on the floor of the hallway to the locker room, head turned back to see what the captain needs.

Shiro rubs at the back of his head and smiles. “You got a minute? I was hoping to talk through a couple things with you.”

You don’t, really, you need to hit the showers and study for a test, but who’s going to tell Takashi Shirogane no? Not you, that’s for sure. “Of course,” you say, and step back out onto the ice, stick in hand. “What’s up?”

Shiro is larger than life in a lot of ways, but he’s also just  _ large _ , and when he comes barreling at you apropos of nothing, you slip out of the way instinctively, feinting around his side just as he slams into the boards next to you.

He beams. “See? You’re so fast.” His voice is full approval, and you’re completely confused, but you also want him to keep using that voice at you, so you nod as though you understand and agree. “You’re very fast,” he says again, tapping your stick with his, “and you’re very aggressive on your drives.” You nod again. It’s true; just because you can dodge well doesn’t mean you spend your time evading everyone on the ice; you’re not afraid of getting hit. “But,” he pauses, and you look up, “I think your stick work could use some practice.”

You hang your head before you even realize you’re doing it. It’s as true as the compliments - you started hockey late, and the years that a lot of kids spend shooting practice shots at the net and controlling pucks around cones you spent in too-small clothes and other people’s homes, with no money or time for things like sports or extracurriculars. 

“Hey,” Shiro says, and you look up again. “It’s okay.” He’s still smiling, and his voice betrays no hint of censure or pity. “Let’s work on it together, okay?” He drops a puck to the ice and backskates a couple of feet before he lets a devilish grin slide onto his handsome face. “Now,” he tips his head at the puck, “try to get that past me.”

It takes the better part of an hour, and you’re both drenched in sweat and exhausted by the end of it, but you get the puck past him. You’ve never seen anyone so openly delighted as Shiro is about your stupid goal, but you can’t resist it, smiling back at him as he claps you on your shoulder and laughs, steering you off the ice and toward the showers.

—-

You’ve never spent much time thinking about your sexual orientation, if you’re honest; it never seemed particularly relevant. You were more concerned with whether or not someone was going to try to beat you up and where your next meal was coming from than who you might fuck. Your soulmate is your mother, so you never had dreams of some special person who might sweep you off your feet, and sex seemed like just a distraction from the things you wanted to do, which were to grow up and get out, in whichever order was more expedient.

It’s not that you don’t experience attraction, because you do, and you honestly think that inanimate objects might spontaneously develop the ability to experience desire if they ever caught a glimpse of Shiro in the showers, but it’s just never mattered much. 

You’re not sure it would matter much now, either, for all that Shiro is god-like in his beauty, if he weren’t so goddamned  _ nice _ . There’s something in your make-up, apparently, that responds to the combination of a beautiful form with a genuine heart by deciding to fall headfirst into day-dreamy crush-land, which leaves you with a hyper-awareness of Shiro at all times and an embarrassing tendency to zone out when you watch him play.

It doesn’t matter. Shiro has a soulmate out there somewhere, waiting for him, and you are demonstrably not it. You don’t want anything quick or easy with him, even if this were a world in which you could have that, so you take those dreams out back and strangle them before they can grow. He is, you think, becoming your friend, and you are grateful enough for that.

 


	2. this moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love

Pidge helps you get a job in town over the summer working at an ice cream shop. She and Matt are among the few who stick around like you do; their parents are Samwell professors and live nearby, so while Matt and Pidge “go home” for the summer, what that means in practice is schlepping their stuff about a mile and a half across town.

Shiro is the other member of the team who doesn’t depart for regions unknown, and instead he picks up a habit of stopping by your ice cream parlor for a double cone every afternoon. You have no idea how the man indulges his very serious sweet tooth the way he does without looking like a polar bear on ice skates, but he must more than make up for it with his intensive exercise regimens. He methodically tries all the flavors at your shop within the space of a couple weeks, and spends the rest of the summer sampling various combinations with gusto. 

It’s your favorite part of the day when Shiro shows up, all sleeveless t-shirt and ratty snap-back shoved on his head, his cut-offs stretched around his massive thighs. His smile is as sweet as the sundaes and cones he loves and he always makes you laugh, no matter how much ice cream is smeared onto your shirt and into your hair.

—

It’s Pidge who settles into your corner booth late in July with a banana split the size of her face ( _ “and don’t short me on the whipped cream, punk” _ ) and asks where you’re living in the fall. 

“The dorms, I guess,” you answer, because you’ve been approved, and while you miss the privacy of the two years you had out in the desert, you sure as shit can’t afford an off-campus apartment. 

“Thought you hated your lacrosse-bro roomie,” she says, biting into a cherry, and you nod. 

“James is a Grade-A prick,” you say, rinsing scoops, “but he mostly leaves me alone since I punched him last year.”

“Why don’t you live somewhere else?”

You drop another cherry onto the melting pile of whipped cream in front of her. “Can’t afford it.”

She hums. “Parents not helping with college?”

The question is calculated, but you don’t hold it against her. You don’t divulge much, you know, even after a year with the team. It’s force of habit more than anything at this point; you’re comfortable with most of them, even if you wouldn’t really call any of them besides Pidge and Shiro your friends.

“Don’t have any,” you say after a brief pause, and she must have assumed or inferred, because she doesn’t bat an eye. 

“Foster care?” 

“Yeah,” you answer, “Left it a while ago, saved up some money. Enough to keep me afloat while I go to school, but not enough for extras.”

She takes another bite of banana and ice cream. “Soulmate?”

You laugh. “My mother.”

“Oh god. I’m sorry.” She has the good grace to look abashed.

“It’s ok,” you tell her, because it is, really. “I don’t care. It just means I’m not waiting for anyone. It’s just me.”

“Ok, just-you,” she says, shoving another spoonful of sundae into her mouth, “does just-you wanna move into the Haus?”

_ Yes _ , you think immediately,  _ yes I do _ , but. “How much is it?”

Pidge shrugs. “Same as the dorms.”

“Plus utilities?” you ask, because you didn’t raise no fool. 

She eyeballs you shrewdly. “Utilities or an expanded slot on the chore roster.”

“Entailing what?”

“We need someone who remembers shit. When to put the bins out; when to water the yard; when to run the dishwasher; when to buy more TP. Things like that.”

“Haus-manager?” 

“Yeah,” she nods, “you don’t have to  _ do _ everything, everyone pitches in on chores, but just… making sure it all happens.”

You wipe your hand on your apron, avoiding the smear of caramel as best you can. 

“Deal.” She grins as she wraps her cold little fingers around your own. 

“‘Swawesome.”

\--

Your new room is the biggest you’ve ever had to yourself. (Your shitty pre-college studio doesn’t count, because it also had a bathroom and a kitchenette taking up part of the space. Those are separate luxuries here.) You have more stuff than you did when you arrived a year ago - the team back where you came from sends the occasional care package, and you’ve got a year’s worth of textbooks and pencils now - but your room is still embarrassingly empty. You tell yourself you don’t care, but you also resolve to maybe hang this year’s team poster when it comes out, just so the walls aren’t quite so relentlessly bare.

Hunk and Lance live upstairs, Matt and Pidge are both a couple doors down, and Shiro… Shiro is in the room across from yours. You share a bathroom now. It’s a blessing for the small but growing friendship you share, and an utter curse for the pathetic way your heart beats when he wanders around in a towel, beaming at the world in general. 

Here are the things you learn about Takashi Shirogane in the next month:

  1. He sings in the shower. Surprisingly well.
  2. The man’s muscles have muscles. It is absurd. (Ok, you knew this already from the locker room, but it is a Different Thing to see them picked out in loving relief by the morning sun.)
  3. He manages his sweet tooth by never keeping sweets in the Haus. If he has to leave to get them, he makes sure to exercise on the way.
  4. He is a morning person, and is disgustingly cheery at obscene hours.
  5. He’s a straight-A, honor-roll, _summa-cum-laude_ perfectionist.
  6. His favorite food is macaroni and cheese.



Here is the information you give up in return:

  1. Your favorite color is red.
  2. You grew up in Arizona, and you like the desert, but you also like the traditional seasons you experience at Samwell. Suddenly things like having orange and red leaves as a thematic “fall” element make a lot more sense.
  3. You would rather do basically any exercise other than running. 



The last one makes him laugh when you admit it, halfway through a 10k that he’s dragged you on since you were the only one awake when he came down to the kitchen for his morning run. 

“But you’re a natural,” he says, laughing and unfairly not at all out of breath as he pounds the pavement. “You’re lean, you have incredible stamina, good form…”

You shrug as best you can without dropping your stride. “Doesn’t mean I like it,” you say, “it’s boring as shit. Worse on a treadmill, but still. I’d rather do something interactive: a class. A sport. Fighting. Whatever.”

Shiro looks over at you with interest, but doesn’t comment, just turns back to the sidewalk ahead of you. He’s silent for a moment, letting his breath come in little puffs in the fall air, then turns back to you with a twinkle in his eye. 

“Race you home,” he says, and takes off like hell’s on his heels. 

You sigh in resignation. It’s still at least two miles back to the Haus, but you are constitutionally incapable of resisting a gauntlet thrown. 

He beats you, but only just.

\--

The team likes to go out after home games to a diner and eat their weight in greasy diner food and milkshakes. It’s kind of a lot for you, if you’re honest, the adrenaline of the game leaving you twitchy and unmoored, and then to be surrounded by everyone laughing and talking and clanking plates and silverware leaves you overstimulated. You refuse the invitation a few times early on in your first year, but the team won’t take no for an answer for long, and so you frequently find yourself crammed into a corner booth between Hunk and Shiro, trying to think small thoughts and let the conversation wash over you.

Shiro gets it, you think, the fact that you can be there but that you can’t quite participate, and he and Hunk direct conversations to either side of you while you inhale your fries. You listen as the waves of sound ebb and flow, while the bustle of the diner rushes past where you sit anchored to the red vinyl by the bulk of your friends hemming you in. 

Tonight it’s a weeknight loss a week before finals, and everyone had eaten their food pretty quickly and bolted except for Shiro, who’s aimlessly playing with the dregs of his milkshake as you finish your food. The gesture draws attention to the black sweatband he habitually wears around his wrist, and you find yourself watching it as his hand moves his spoon, wondering as you chew. 

Who is Shiro’s soulmate? Has he met them? You assume not, or someone would have mentioned it by now. It’s unusual to cover one’s soulmark, though not unheard of, and you know Shiro spent time being pretty well covered by the media when he was an up-and-coming hockey star, before he dropped out of the limelight for a couple of years. Maybe his soulmate is significantly younger, or significantly older, or someone who just values their privacy. Maybe he wears it to protect them. Or maybe he doesn’t know them yet? But then why the secrecy?

“You okay?” Shiro’s voice cuts through your musings, and you look up from where you’re stabbing at your fries with a fork to see him watching you with amusement. “Pretty sure those potatoes aren’t a threat anymore.”

You sigh. You’re not equipped to have conversations like this, but you’re also not equipped with much of a filter. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Shiro shrugs and plays with his shake some more. “What’s up?”

“Why do you cover your soulmark?” You wave your fork at his wristband, and regret the question the second it leaves your mouth. 

Shiro’s face goes through a complicated series of expressions before he finally laughs and rubs at the back of his head. “Um,” he says, and doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “Because it feels very private to me, I guess.”

You nod. It was a stupid question. 

“Why don’t you cover yours?” 

You turn your wrist over to glance at your mark. You don’t even see it anymore, not really. It’s like a birthmark, or a scar. “Because it doesn’t matter.”

Shiro’s expression now is unreadable, and you study it, trying to find the pieces of it that will make a whole.

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”

“I mean it doesn’t matter. I already know who it is, and it’s irrelevant to my life.”

“How…” Shiro’s clearly confused, and while it’s not a conversation you love having, you owe him this much for your own rude question.

You hold your arm out to him, watch dispassionately as he cups his large hand around your bony joint and reads the name. 

“Kogane?” He asks, “A family match?”

You nod. Family matches are uncommon, maybe one in fifteen, but they happen. Heck, even within the Haus, Pidge and Matt are a family match. You’ve only met one other that you know of, a co-worker at the ice rink whose soulmate was a cousin, but they’re not the rarest possibility.

“My mother,” you say, and Shiro’s eyes snap to yours, round and surprised. He doesn’t know the details, but he does know you don’t have family you keep in touch with, so you imagine he can fill in the gaps. 

“Do you miss her?” he asks, and it’s maybe the most tactful way anyone’s ever inquired about your history. 

“No, not really,” you say, and steal his milkshake to take a drink. “I don’t remember her.”

“I’m sorry, Keith,” he tells you, hand still warm on your wrist, and you shrug. “It’s okay. It’s nice, really? I’m not waiting on anyone, you know? I can just… live my life. I don’t have to wonder when I’ll meet my soulmate, or worry about whether my soulmate’s family likes me, or any of that bullshit. It’s just me.”

Shiro nods slowly, his face still unreadable. “Yeah,” he says, his tone wondering, “that’s a really good way to look at it.” He pauses for a long moment, something sad in his eyes when he finally looks back at you. “Don’t you worry about getting lonely?”

You’re not sure what possesses you to say it; maybe it’s the late hour, maybe it’s that it’s the end of the semester, and you’re too run down to keep up your thin veneer of aloofness, maybe it’s just that Shiro radiates trustworthiness.

“No,” you say, shoving your last fry in your mouth and chewing, “I already am.”

\--

Something shifts between the two of you after that, and you can’t name it, but there’s a difference. Shiro leaves his door open more frequently so you can come in and study with him. You alter your schedule so that you can join him on his morning runs. (You still hate running, but you’ll admit there’s a certain zen to the silence of campus just after dawn.) The spot next to Shiro on the bus is always open now, and he pats it as you walk past just in case you might think of sitting somewhere else, might decide to do something other than plop down next to him and share earbuds as you watch yet another shitty space movie from Shiro’s extensive collection.

The third game in January you forget your winter gear, and find yourself snuggled up under Shiro’s arm for warmth on the bus. The man is like a heater, and you’ve never been more grateful for the way that hockey players routinely ignore social norms regarding things like “personal space.”

On the walk from the bus to the Haus, Shiro takes your hands in his and pulls his own gloves onto them, warm and soft and just a little too large, then shoves his hat down on your head. It covers your face down to your nose, but he just laughs and pulls it up, settling it on your head properly and pausing to admire his handiwork with his palms cupped on either side of your face. 

“There,” he says, and his smile makes your heart leap up your throat and try to strangle you. “Better?”

“Yeah,” you manage, “I should survive all six blocks to the Haus now.”

He laughs, and when you get inside, shivering and blowing puffs of vapor into the air, he pulls his hat off your head and goes upstairs. He forgets his gloves, and you take them off to wash your face and brush your teeth, and then, to your ever-abiding shame, you put them on to sleep.

\--

Shiro is not a drinker, but apparently he’s made an exception for the Spring Break Kick-Off Epikegster, because he is so drunk he’s flushed and giggly, and you have never seen him quite like this. 

You drink the beer you’re handed, and then the jello shot, even though jello is disgusting, and then a second, more disgusting jello shot (at least orange jello tastes okay even if the texture is off-putting; green jello is just vile), and then somehow you’re holding two beers, and you end up just drinking them because you don’t want to babysit them all night. 

At some point you make your way upstairs and out onto the roof - you’re still sober enough that it’s not a terrible idea, and the noise and heat of downstairs is getting a little overwhelming. The roof is nice, though, muting the din and with a good breeze, the stars shining down from above. 

You don’t realize at first that you’re not alone, but then you hear a shuffle to your side and turn to see Shiro flat on his back, his ridiculous white hair sticking straight up, a beacon in the dark.

“Oh, sorry,” you say, starting to stand up, “I’ll just…”

A hand reaches out and grasps at your bare ankle, his grip large enough that it easily encircles the entire joint. “No,” Shiro says, and his voice sounds blissfully calm, “no, stay.”

It feels dangerous to be out here, warmly buzzed and under a beautiful dark sky with the man you can’t stop thinking about, but you’ve never said no to Shiro, and you’re not likely to start now. You settle down on the roof, letting the ambient heat of shingles sink into your body and relax you, breathing slowly. Shiro’s hand is still on your ankle, his thumb rubbing absentmindedly across your skin, and you’d like to stretch your legs out but you also can’t bear the thought of losing that contact.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he says after a moment, and you hum agreeably in response. 

“Just looking at the stars,” you say, and it’s true. You’ve always loved them. “They’re dimmer here. Too humid, too much light in town. Where I used to live, I could go out and lie on the roof and see the whole Milky Way.”

Shiro releases his hold on you, and your skin feels cold, but he turns on his side, propping himself up on an elbow and watching you. “You’re a business major,” he says, and you shrug.

“Seemed useful. Not gonna waste my degree on something like underwater basket-weaving. I need to get in and get out and get a job.”

“You ever think of being an astronaut?” He asks, eyes twinkling, and it surprises a laugh out of you. 

“No, not really,” you say, then bite your lip. “Maybe when I was little. My dad used to take me star-gazing, probably I did then. But after that…no.”

Shiro makes an empathetic noise, and silence falls between you. 

“Did you?” You ask him after a moment. 

“Yeah,” his answer is immediate, and his face when you turn to look at it is nostalgic in the starlight. “All the time. So much to see, so much to discover. No one on Earth to miss me. Why wouldn’t I?”

There’s something off in that statement, but you’re buzzed enough that it takes you a moment. “People would miss you, Shiro,” you tell him, and it feels incriminating, but in your defense, Shiro is widely beloved by all.

Shiro waves it off. “Sure, but not really. Everyone’s got someone. My grandparents have each other. Matt has Pidge. You’ve got…” he trails off, and you laugh at the suddenly stricken look on his face. 

“It’s ok, Shiro,” you say, “I’ve never had anyone.”

He reaches out and takes your wrist in his hand, cradling it gently. His touch sends lightning racing up your arm, and you suppress a shiver as he looks at you and asks, “Is this ok?”

You nod, and his warm, callused finger traces a careful line across your mother’s name. 

“You did have someone,” he says firmly, and it’s as though he’s speaking to himself, “you had someone who loved you, who was your match.”

“It didn’t matter,” you tell him, and he looks at you, his eyes stricken, and you  _ know  _ he knows but it’s like he’s hearing it all over again. “It wasn’t enough. She left, and I have no one.” You pause, and everything freezes, and your mouth just keeps going like it doesn’t know any better. “But now I have you,” it says, and Shiro’s whole face changes.

He drops your wrist, and you brace for him to leave before you realize what you’re doing, your whole body going tight and tense, but he’s scrabbling at his wrist instead, tearing off his cuff, and then thrusting his arm at you, desperation in his gaze. 

“No, Keith,” he says, and you grab on to his arm to steady yourself, because there is blank skin under his cuff, no name, no sign, no nothing, and you didn’t know that was even possible. “ _ I _ have no one,” he tells you, and his voice is terrible, broken and lonely and so, so sad.

“No,” you say, holding your voice as steady as you possibly can, “no, Shiro.” You take his arm with its tender, unmarked skin and you bend your head to it, pressing your mouth as gently as you can to this piece of the man that you care so much about, this part of him that has clearly caused so much pain. You kiss it twice, once to heal and once to hope, you think nonsensically, before raising your head to meet his gaze. 

He looks like you’ve hit him over the head with a hockey stick, his eyes wide and mouth slack, and you know you’ve way,  _ way  _ overstepped, but you can’t stop now. You fold your fingers over his wrist, sealing in the touch of your lips to his skin, and look him in the eye as the stars spin around you.

“You have  _ me _ ,” you say, and your voice is completely steady now, not so much as a sliver of fear or doubt. “Shiro, you have me.”


	3. one life, or the faring stars

“Do you think you’ll ever fall in love?”

Pidge blinks at you from where she sits on her bed. 

“C’mon in, Keith,” she says, a twist to her lips, “make yourself at home, ask anything you like.”

You roll your eyes, but you enter, sprawling out on her round rag rug. 

“Do you?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Haven’t thought about it much, I guess.”

“Have you ever dated?”

“Yeah,” she highlights a passage in her textbook and shoves her glasses up her nose. “I had a kinda serious girlfriend in high school, but then she met her soulmate, so. You know.”

You nod absently. “Has Matt?”

Pidge snorts. “I know you are neither deaf nor blind.”

“I know he  _ fucks _ ,” you say, “everybody in the Haus knows that. But does he date?”

“Yeah,” she says, putting a marker in her book and turning to face you, “he has occasionally. It’s never really gone anywhere though. Why are you asking me all this?”

You study your shoes. “Because you have a family bond.”

“Oh,” Pidge says, “this is about Shiro.”

“Can we not?” you ask, playing with a loose piece of her rug.

“No way,” she says, “you came in here and started this.”

She has a point. You sigh. “I just…”

She takes pity on you after a moment. “Having a family bond doesn’t rule out having a romantic relationship, Keith. Just because Matt and I haven’t done particularly well in that regard doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”

She’s right, you suppose, but. “What if people with family or platonic bonds aren’t capable of romantic love? What if that’s why we get them in the first place?”

“Nonsense,” Pidge says firmly, “there are many kinds of love, and they are all valid. Soulmate love is only one of them. And just because romance is the predominant type of love associated with soulmarks doesn’t mean that it’s exclusive to them, or that it’s the only way you can experience those feelings.”

“But how do you know?” you push, dropping the frayed end of the carpet that you’ve been fiddling with in order to flop backward onto the floor.

“ _ Science _ ,” Pidge tells you, voice triumphant. “And personal experience. Just because Nadia and I didn’t work out doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. I absolutely did. And there’s no reason to think I, or Matt, won’t fall in love again. It’s just that we probably have less of an impetus to actively seek it out because we already have a strong emotional bond in our lives.”

You drag your hands over your eyes. “I’ve never felt like this before,” you confess to the ceiling. “Not about anybody. I don’t know what this is.”

Pidge reaches down and pats your foot. “It’s okay, Keithy-kat. You just need to talk to him.”

Talking to him, you think, is probably the last thing you need.

\--

Spring is a slow torture. Your class load is busy, and hockey is busy, and keeping up with everyone in the Haus is busy, and you’re trying hard not to think about how graduation is coming and is going to take Matt and Shiro away from Samwell (away from you). 

The image of the unmarked skin of Shiro’s arm in the moonlight haunts you. You can’t imagine what it’s like to keep that kind of secret for half your life, to carry that weight as silently as he does. You can see echoes of it now in his every interaction: the way he keeps himself slightly apart from everyone, the way he politely but firmly discourages anyone who hits on him, the way he pushes himself to be a good leader, a good example, while simultaneously keeping nearly everyone at arm’s length. It’s the desperation of someone trying to prove themselves worthy, someone who believes that if they can just  _ try  _ hard enough, they can make themselves  _ be  _ enough. It’s the coping mechanism of someone who has spent the latter portion of their life believing themselves unworthy of love; of thinking that, no matter how much some may laud them, they will never come first in anyone else’s world. 

“You’re thinking hard,” Shiro says, his voice light. You’re in his room studying, your books and papers spread out around you on his floor while he perches at his desk. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“Have you ever…” you start to ask without thinking, but then you realize what you’re doing and stop cold. 

“Have I ever…?” Shiro prompts, but you shake your head, unwilling to finish your sentence. It’s too late, though, his gaze follows yours to the band on his wrist and he sighs. “Ah. Have I ever shown anyone else?”

His eyes are dark and sad, but he’s caught you out, so you just nod mutely, your face a mask of apology. He reaches down to rub a thumb over the band, an absent gesture, and you pull your knees to your chest, trying to breathe.

“Yeah,” he says finally, “I did. I showed it to one other person.”

“Who?” you ask, your voice barely a whisper.

“Adam Wilson,” he answers, and your eyes widen. You know who Adam Wilson is; he’s a hockey prodigy of the same caliber as Shiro, only instead of disappearing for a couple of years the way Shiro did, he’s gone pro, and plays for the Garrison not all that far from where you grew up. 

“Why?” You know from the media that Takashi Shirogane and Adam Wilson were close, and you know the breadth and depth of the speculation that arose over just how close the two young hockey phenoms might have been, but you want the story from Shiro himself, not to try and assemble a disparate narrative out of mismatched pieces.

“We were close,” Shiro says, and there’s something empty in the matter-of-fact way that it comes out that breaks your heart. “We were...I knew we weren’t soulmates,” he gives a small laugh, but it’s brittle, “obviously. But he wore a cuff too, and first we were friends, and then we were...then we were more, but he always wanted to know. And I thought…” Shiro pauses, shakes his head. He catches your gaze and smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I thought maybe he was like me. Like maybe we could write a new story together, one that said that we were meant to be together in spite of what we lacked, maybe even  _ because  _ of what we didn’t have.”

“But?” you prompt when he falls silent. You wonder if he’s told anyone else this story, or if you’re the first one who’s heard these words.

“But he wanted to know,” Shiro says, “so one night we pulled our cuffs off at the same time, and under his was someone else’s name, and under mine...well, you’ve seen it.”

“Shiro,” you start, but he just shrugs. 

“I guess it wasn’t what he was expecting,” Shiro says. “It wasn’t the same after that. For either of us.”

He smiles again, softer this time, and you want to put your arms around him and save him from the ugliness of the world outside. This gentle, brilliant man deserves so much more than to be pushed away and kept apart, and you… you want…

You shuffle the pages in your textbook and look away. “I’m sorry, Shiro,” you say, and you can hear the way it falls flat in the silent room.

“It’s ok,” he says, his voice tired, “it was a long time ago.”

\--

The second half of the semester passes in a blur of papers and presentations and parties and games. Matt gets into Harvard and Pidge goes on a week-long pre-finals stress bender during which she stays awake for a record 72 hours before ultimately crashing and burning hard. Hunk stress-bakes more pies than the Haus can keep up with, and this leads to Lance inviting the entire volleyball team (but especially Allura Alforson) over to the Haus for a weekend to help. The team makes it all the way to the final four, but gets eliminated, and Shiro, you know, takes it as his own personal failure. 

You do what you can for all of them, which is different and hard and strange, but also feels right. You go with Matt to get his hair cut when he doesn’t want to tell anyone else. You strategically place glasses of water and snack bars in Pidge’s path so that she doesn’t subsist entirely on coffee and Red Bull. You run a load of Hunk’s baking down to the food pantry in town, and you don’t tell Allura about how Lance got so drunk at the Epikegster that he covered himself in paint and ran naked through the Haus screaming that he deserved an EGOT. 

You knock on Shiro’s door when he closes it, and you study with him even when he won’t talk for hours, and you join him for every run, and sometimes, at night, you go out on the roof and just sit next to him in silence until the sun rises on a new day. 

\--

Two nights before graduation you’re packing your things when it hits you, really hits you, that this is it. Shiro has signed with an NHL team, and is leaving for training camp the day after graduation, and even though he’ll only be an hour away, god knows if or how much you’ll ever see him again. It rushes over you like a wind, sweeping you into the realization that, once again, the person you have unwittingly loved is leaving you, and you sob aloud, once, into the empty silence of your room before you put down the shirt you were folding and cross the hall. 

He’s standing in the dim glow of the overhead, his head turning as he hears you approach, and you can see by the look on his face that you’re an open book. He holds his arms out and you walk into them, unable to meet his gaze, and you find yourself staring, instead, at his bare feet on the wooden floorboards. They’re an incongruous piece of the man who is holding you, delicately arched and vulnerable in their thin-skinned pinkness, and you watch as a tear falls from your face to splash on an unprotected toe. 

“Hey,” he says after a minute, not loosening his hold on you, “what’s going on?”

It’s simple, in the end, so you just spit it out. 

“I don’t want you to go,” you say, and you feel him exhale against the top of your head. 

“Keith,” he says, and there’s a tremor in his voice and his hands that you’ve never heard before. It makes you pull back to look at him, and his face holds an ill-fitting uncertainty that makes your stomach clench. “Keith,” he starts again, and squares his shoulders as though to take a hit, “I think… I know I’m leaving in three days, and that it would never be the same as if we were soulmates, but…”

“Shiro,” you say, and he pauses to look at you and breathe before he continues. 

“Keith, I don’t really know what it means to love, or if I’m even capable of it, but I think I’m -”

You cover his mouth with yours and the words fall silent, the room humming around you with the sounds of your friends downstairs and the drone of Junebugs in the dusk, the hum of the streetlamp outside Shiro’s window and the soft sound of his stuttered inhale.

You pull away first, and he’s got that hockey-sticked look to him again, all huge eyes and softly opened mouth. It makes you laugh even as he smiles slow and wide and leans in again.

\--

Two days later at graduation Shiro leaves his wrist bare under the curve of his dress shirt’s cuffs. You know, because before he put on the cap and gown, you pulled loose his cufflink and kissed it, and then him, before letting him walk away from you with a promise to return.


End file.
